OUTFOXED AGAIN

ITEM: According to the latest Nielsen ratings report, Fox News not only ranked as the top cable news network in 2009 (for the eighth year in a row), but also saw the highest ratings in its entire history.

You can expect more of the same in 2010. The first quarter of this year was Fox’s best quarter ever – so much so that Fox ranked the second most watched cable channel in prime time (behind USA Network).

Mediaite has a breakdown as to why, but basically you can credit the numbers to Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Fox’s Tea Party sponserships (as well as Barack HUSSEIN! HUSSEIN! HUSSEIN! HUSSEIN! HUSSEIN! HUSSEIN! GODDAMMIT! HUSSEIN! Obama getting elected).

What’s even more telling is the ratings of Fox’s competitors:

In the A25-54 demographic during prime time, FNC was up 16%, while CNN dropped 42%, MSNBC was down 22% and HLN was down 40%. In total viewers prime time, FNC was up 3% while the rest declined as well (CNN – 39%, MSNBC – 15%, HLN – 24%).

One interesting stat is that, at least in the prime time slot, MSNBC beat CNN for the first time last year, thanks to KO and Maddow.

It’s also worth noting that there’s a good chance the reason KO and Maddow are seeing an overall drop is because more people are watching them online via MSNBC’s web site. (Nielsen may or may not have some figures on that somewhere.)

Either way, it’s looking grim for CNN – which, at least compared to Fox and MSNBC, is the only major new network left that isn’t pandering to a specific political wing. Which suggests that objective television journalism is pretty much done as a concept.

Which may or may not be a good thing. Or at least it may not matter in these days where people have the power to carefully tailor their news input to reaffirm their worldview and dismiss all other sources as biased.

Either way, it’s pretty likely that news in 2010 will succeed by being as loud and partisan as possible. And why not? Truth has been reduced to a demographic in the Batshit Reality Schism era.

But then Howard Beale the Mad Prophet told you this would happen over 30 years ago. You were warned.

By the numbers,

This is dF

FOXES, TITANS, DRAGONS AND ALIENS

Or, “How I spent my five-day weekend”.

I spent it going to the early-morning matinees with the family, mostly (and then sleeping all afternoon). Here’s what we saw and what I thought of it, because this is stuff you need to know.

Fantastic Mr Fox

I’m off and on with Wes Anderson – The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou was brilliant, The Darjeeling Limited not so much, for example. But with Anderson doing a stop-motion animation adaptation of Roald Dahl's book (which I haven't read), I had to go see it. And it’s the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

The basic story of Mr Fox promising his pregnant wife to give up stealing chickens to raise his family, only to revert for “one last big job”, is pretty straightforward, but like most Anderson films, the secret is in decorating dysfunctional family relationships with a storybook aesthetic, brilliant, funny dialogue and a great classic rock song for the end credits.

It’s also proof that you don’t have to dumb down a story to make it suitable for kids (assuming Anderson even made it as a kid’s movie, and assuming kids who saw it liked it).

How To Train Your Dragon

Another animated film based on a children’s book I haven’t read that follows the nerdy-outsider formula, but does it really well.

The basic story – a teenage Viking misfit who needs to kill a dragon to impress both his dad and a girl ends up befriending one – is pretty familiar and somewhat predictable, but the characterization, quality jokes and action more than make up for that – so much so that I’m willing to overlook the puzzle of just why all the grown-up Vikings have Scottish accents. Good fun.

Planet 51

Animated film whose main gimmick is reversing the 50s Alien Invasion B-movie in which aliens are the ones whose comfortable small-town lives are disrupted by a UFO from Earth.

Cute idea, but the story that comes with it is full of comic-misunderstanding cliches, misplaced Cold War paranoia and a tired win-the-girl angle. All of which would be okay if they came up with fresh twists or clever lines, but mostly they don’t.

It says a lot that the only interesting characters are two minor ones: a rover robot and a dog/pet version of HR Giger’s Alien creature (one of the few clever bits in the film). You know yr in trouble when having Gary Oldman as the antagonist doesn’t help.

Clash Of The Titans

While I'm not crazy about remakes,let’s be honest: the only good things about the original were (1) Ursula Andress and (2) Ray “F*** Yeah Stop Motion” Harryhausen (mostly the latter). That said, the new version is yet another dose of blockbuster CG overload and “let’s make the action exciting by shaking the goddamn camera so much you can’t see what’s going on” directing.

Not that it’s all bad. It’s a pretty decent (if occasionally clunky) story as Greek legends go, and I’ll take Sam Worthington over Harry Hamlin as Perseus anyday. And it’s got a great sense of energy that the original desperately lacked.

What it doesn’t have is the campy B-movie charm that has made the original a cult favorite. If nothing else, the 2010 model more entertaining than Percy Jackson & The Olympians, but otherwise it’s not all that essential.

Release the Kraken,

This is dF